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Solace. Belinda McKeon (2011)

by Belinda McKeon(Favorite Author)

3.42 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0330529862 (ISBN13: 9780330529860)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Picador USA

review 1: This author's dialogue is exceptional. Its pitch perfect and with one line of dialogue between two of her characters you have a deep understanding of who they are, how they feel about each other, where they are and what their chances are. The plot dips at times but overall this was an insightful novel. It captures a certain time and age group, and their dealing with the eternal tensions between rural and country, family ties and future possibilities in Ireland.
review 2: There were some very beautiful passages in this first novel set in modern-day Ireland and which tells a story of inter-generational conflict and inter-family rivalry. The rural scenes worked best for me and I wanted more of those. I liked the sub-plot about the eighteenth century author, Maria ... moreEdgeworth and was eager for it to be woven more satisfyingly into the main plot. Here are some passages, which give an idea of the promise in Belinda McKeon’s writing: “But, then, just as quickly, they looked away, to the baby again, and they were focused tight in on her as though on a button they were trying to unfasten; pulling the white cap back down on her head, taking the little hands and hiding them under white cotton cuffs, touching the tiny, crumpled face and willing it to smooth contentment. And at that kind of willing, that kind of wishing, they would spend, probably, most of the rest of their days.” “Those first years, when he was small, there was pleasure just in watching him among the animals, the fields, the sheds that, before him, had only meant work or money. To see this boy stride around the farm, even if he was hardly taller than the sheepdog, even if he was in short trousers and red wellingtons, even if had a head of curls like a girl; even for all this, the sight of him there was like a prayer lodged in the mind and answered with every thought.”“Mark could see his reflection in the glass against the darkness; he looked hard-faced, he thought, wild-haired, his shoulders hunched.....He looked like one of the farmers who lived nearby....The same way of walking, the same way of standing, the same way of looking up slowly and assessing whatever met their eye - a woman, an engine, a sky.”And a final one:“Faced with this silence that was Keogh’s kindness, he felt only light and bloodless, emptied of himself and of everything that fixed him to his standing. He needed something to shoulder against, something at which to pitch himself, muscled with the old fury, with the old contempt. But there was nothing.” less

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